Not just Another Ordinary Fatcow Review

Are you considering Fatcow for your website, but have heard mixed reviews about Fatcow? We do not blame you for being more confused after reading and listening to any Fatcow review. We will be upfront and straight to the point from the beginning – if you want a website provider with absolutely zero negative feedback, and tech support that solves all your hosting problem within 5 minutes, then you should not proceed with Fatcow. Read our alternative hosting options below for recommendation. If you want a web hosting that doesn’t care if you upload 55,681 MP3 songs or images to your web hosting space; then DO NOT get the hosting plan from Fatcow because you will quickly get your account suspended.

However, if you mostly want an affordable PHP/MySQL hosting, with free domain name and beginner-friendly website Builder, you will like Fatcow just fine.

Some say Fatcow Hosting scams or Fatcow sucks? Saw some Fatcow.com issues, Fatcow complaints and bad customer experiences? Can these negative reviews be trusted? Heard some horror stories about their limitations?

Here is the truth. According to a study conducted by America’s premier customer services research firm, TARP, customers are more likely to speak about a company when things go wrong rather than when they go right. On average, customers are twice as likely to talk about a bad experience as they are to share a positive one. So we can safely say that for every negative comment about Fatcow, there are two more good Fatcow reviews we did not hear about.

Despite the fact that Fatcow’s parent company is accredited at Better Business Bureau (BBB) with the highest rating possible (A+), some bad Fatcow experiences and stories on the web may make you think twice to signup at Fatcow.com

Only you can decide if Fatcow is right for you, based on your own requirements. You should never trust any Fatcow review or recommendation your read on a “best hosting” or “top 10” site. No web host is perfect. Not even those where you pay 5 times the cost at Fatcow. But so many are satisfied with Fatcow and your probably will too. You should also look at the limitations and reasons not to use Fatcow below.

How Good is Fatcow Web Hosting

From our findings, only about 8 out of every 100,000 search engine result pages about Fatcow says anything bad about Fatcow. This is still extremely good considering other business web host we have looked at have much worst ratio.

Another strong point of Fatcow is their novice-friendly and simple-to-use Site Builder. If you are new to website building and want to have a web presence immediately, then you will need a Sitebuilder. You can build your website quickly within minutes without any knowledge of HTML, CSS or scripting by using their Weebly-like Site Builder.

Affordable hosting is the other rationale on why so many people are using Fatcow. “It is cheaper than a meal at McDonald’s”, is what some are saying about the amazingly low hosting price at Fatcow. You can also get an extra discount by using the secret link below. The price can be as low as $3.67/month if you are paying for 2-3 years or $4.67 if you are paying for a year.

You also get free domain name for life with a Fatcow hosting plan. This not only will save you on the cost of the web domain registration, but will also give you the peace of mind because you do not have to worry about DNS settings, A records, domain forwarding, email forwarding, domain renewal or any other domain related configurations. If you are new to developing and building websites, this tasks can be quite daunting, especially if you bought your domain at a different company like Godaddy. Many people did report that they gave up after failing to get the domain name to work with the web hosting account.

Pros: Summary of Reasons Why You Should Choose Fatcow

You want a free domain and do not want the hassle of configuring your domain to work with the hosting plan.

You want to build a website quickly with a good Site Builder.

You want to install WordPress, Joomla, phpBB and other open source scripts quickly using one-click installer.

You want a cheap hosting package that includes a lot of features.

You need unlimited diskspace and bandwidth.

You plan to host multiple domain names under one account for simplicity and cost-saving reasons.

Cons: Some Reasons to Avoid Fatcow

Here are some reasons why you should not use Fatcow:

You want to host an adult website. Most cheap web hosts do not allow adult websites and you are better off getting a dedicated server.

You need to use cPanel. If you do not know what cPanel is, you probably will not miss it.

You want to use the “unlimited” hosting space to store files or backup of your PC. This is against the “fair usage policy” of most hosting companies, not just Fatcow.

You want an upgrade option to VPS or dedicated hosting at the same hosting company. Fatcow only offers shared hosting.

Other add-on services such as SEO service, SSL, domain privacy and various other add-on services were reported not to receive proper support or they are not worth the price paid. Use a hosting company such as Fatcow for what they are good at – web hosting. This is true with any other cheap web hosting companies too. If you want a SEO service, go with a professional company. If you want better domain management and privacy protection, go with one of the best domain registrars.

We know, finding a good web hosting can be tiring and time consuming, when you should be building your website, writing on your WordPress blog or selling your product. You have read the other positive Fatcow reviews elsewhere. Fatcow does what a hosting company should do. That is, Fatcow actually answers their phones, replies to their emails, responds to live chat requests, and provides quality Site Builder. So among the millions of satisfied clients, surely a few may disagree with us.

You have seen the figures, BBB rating and chart above. Numbers don’t lie. You should look no further. Need a Fatcow coupon code? We found something special to share with you. Follow the Fatcow discount link below and get extra discount for your order ( or go to http://go.hostingsthatsuck.com/fatcow.php ). You will miss 100% of the business you did not start. If you sign up today, you can use the link below to get exclusive 47% discount from their normal price. They used to give 50% discount (see the screen shot below) but not any more. This 47% offer will also end any time soon. So hurry before the promotion is gone:

Fatcow Alternative

If you think Fatcow cannot meet your requirements, then we recommend you look at inMotion hosting. They have cPanel, SSH access, and options to upgrade to their VPS and dedicated hosting. We are recommending an alternative hosting plan by InMotion Hosting because of their custom-fit packages are priced from only $3 monthly! You pay for what you need and all packages come with cPanel (which Fatcow does not offer) and eCommerce-ready support. Our InMotion hosting review is as good, if not better than about Fatcow. If you have any doubt at all about Fatcow, get inMotion hosting instead.

Discount Link for InMotion Hosting
PROMO / COUPON CODE: Don’t worry about remembering the InMotion coupon code. Just use the button below and it automatically apply coupon code (if available) when you checkout.

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82 Comments

FATCOW DOES SUCK at some things. Sure, they are “ok” for little businesses and their customer service is good (thank goodness!) though, as mentioned before, MAKE SURE YOU ARE ON MANUAL RENEWAL FOR EVERYTHING, NOT JUST THE DOMAIN NAME.
I decided to not use the url I bought with them and knew I had set the renewal on manual. I got an email about a month ago saying they were going to renew my name “IF it was on autorenew” I knew it wasn’t, so didn’t respond.
I got NO FURTHER COMMUNICATION FROM THE COMPANY.
When I checked my credit card statement, however, I found a charge for 21.98 from FatCow. HUH???
When I called in just now, they said it was for “privacy” at 10.99 and OOPS, they had “double charged” me… again… HUH???

Soooo… I no longer have a domain name with you, but you’re going to charge me a privacy fee on something that doesn’t exist??? AND you’re going to do it TWICE??? AND you’re NOT GOING TO TELL ME ABOUT IT?

Thank goodness they were nice just now on the phone and took the charge(s) off… Though it irritated me at how deceptive their business practices were in the first place

1 – AUTO charging for something I did NOT authorize
2 – DOUBLE charging
3 – NOT TELLING ME about the charges

My advice – if you go with them, MAKE SURE TO CHECK YOUR BILL EVERY YEAR, EVEN AFTER YOU’VE STOPPED SERVICE.

Everything is good, except I violated the user agreement and they cancelled my account. It turns out that you cannot use your site to store your backups, for example. Email from their legal department: “Hosting space … is limited to Web files, e-mail and content of the hosted Web sites, not for storage of media and other data.” I used it to store my backups. My account is cancelled and now I’m using a different backup solution. So keep that in mind. You are allowed to store only the content of your website and your emails.

Email for the Mac has been terrible for me lately! I’ve used them for a pop account for several years but when the SMTP stopped working recently I’ve found that they provide SEVERAL DIFFERENT guides in their knowlegebase on setting up an email account in different places they suggest mail.domain, pop.domain, imap.domain … Chat tech has given me 3 different setup schemes also including pop.fatcow, username.fatcow and pop.domain, all of which work for a day then fail the next. extremely frustrating.

“On average, customers are twice as likely to talk about a bad experience as they are to share a positive one. So we can safely say that for every negative comment about Fatcow, there are two more good Fatcow reviews we did not hear about.”

Why can you “safely” say this? Being twice as likely to talk about a bad experience does not mean that one person being upset means that two people are happy. It just means that if your service is bad you’re going to get more complaints than praises if your service were good. That is really the only relationship you can draw.

I have had a bad experience with FatCow myself: terrible wait times in the live chat (30 minutes for them to decide they weren’t sure what they were doing and escalate a ticket), misleading advertising (the site sales page mentions Ruby, but their hosting does not process Ruby scripts), and terrible archival services (you can’t manually zip and download your entire website all at once; you have to either download everything uncompressed or compress each directory as you go [as far as I have so far been able to figure out]).

On the other hand, the site is INCREDIBLY cheap—and if you’re just running a simple script or page here or there, I DO recommend them. But if you’re anything of a techie, or need anything more advanced whatsoever or expect much for the support staff, I would go with someone like Bluehost.com.

I pay $20 month to Cave Creek in Tempe, AZ since 1997 or so. The techs always answer the phone. You dial the number, hit ext. 2, and they answer the phone. My website never goes down. Now and then I can’t get my email, because they upgraded their servers, but they always fix this when I call them. Or they will do it via an e-ticket and they always stay on top of it. Yes, once they upgraded and totally wiped out my old HTLM shopping cart, but I guess I had to get up to date myself.

I think you get what you pay for, frankly. Or, this type of service is for us old foggies, who do not want to DYI, and are used to hiring professionals for the job (a webmaster that interfaced with my website and my web host company). now it seems it is a new generation is there, so I am looking elsewhere, as the server went down there for 5 days! (no email, but website worked). However, I am extremely cautious because you MUST have a company where the techs answer the phones, and are “on it.”

On the other side of the coin, what also happens is when people pay nearly nothing, they expect the world. I find this a bizarre phenomenon, but is obviously the case. Why DYI, and then complain? Web hosting and building websites is no more easier than it was 20 years ago – except I CAN edit on my own WordPress website, which is a joy to be able to do. I guess my point is: you have web hosting company for the life of yoru business, so better research very very well at the beginning. it is not a simple or light decision. Just my two cents.

What I will do, is go with Fat Cow, put up a blog with their tools, stay with it for about a year, and then make an assessment. That is how one who has a serious business goes about things. You must be careful, and know exactly what you want. if you don’t know, then do a test for awhile.

On February 23, 2015, my website ( on Fatcow for 8 years)was temporarily suspended functionality, and asked to remove malicious or infected files. This the first time I have received such notice from Fatcow since being a client. Website was working fine, no problems that I could see. Fatcow sent me a list of 26 malicious or infected files. Could I not be notified after 1 or 2 files? Who is watching the Server?
Besides their recommendation that I delete and republish my entire website, there are other area’s that only a webmaster could handle.

Feel I have been handed a raw deal. Also, calling Tech support is a pain. To long a wait.

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